Top Things to do in Utah
Top Hotels in Utah
- 1. Best Western Plus Zion Canyon Inn & Suites
- 2. Best Western Plus Abbey Inn
- 3. Abbey Inn & Suites
- 4. Best Western Plus Ruby'S Inn
- 5. Hyatt Place Moab
- 6. Best Western Plus Bryce Canyon Grand Hotel
- 7. Goulding's Lodge & Campground
- 8. Desert Pearl Inn
- 9. Bowen Motel
- 10. La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham at Zion Park/Springdale
The 10 Best Things to do Adventurous in Utah, United States
Welcome to “The Greatest Snow on Earth” – Utah’s paradise for all outdoor enthusiasts! As host of the 2002 Winter Olympics, Park City knows how to entertain winter fun seekers. Snowboarders and skiers head for miles of spectacular slopes with deep fluffy powder and breathtaking mountain views. The Olympic Park provides family-friendly ski programs, rides and shows. Alta, Sundance, Snowbird and Brighton are other popular destinations for cross country and Alpine skiers. Those alluring snowy slopes turn to rolling wildflower fields in the summer. Golfing, fishing, horseback riding and water sports replace chilly outdoor sports adventures. Corral the family, pack a picnic and catch one of the ski lifts for an afternoon of hiking or mountain biking along scenic trails. Head to Salt Lake City, where Temple Square hosts millions of visitors a year. Bryce Canyon and Arches National Park are famous for surreal landscapes from horseshoe-shaped amphitheaters to unusual rock formations and hundreds of natural sandstone arches. Closer to home, wander along the quaint main streets of mountain villages to browse, shop and enjoy lunch at an outdoor café. At the end of the day, head home for an outdoor barbecue and an evening of games. Home rentals blend privacy, space and comfort with the cost-saving advantage of eating some meals at home.
Restaurants in Utah
1. The Narrows
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 3,489 reviews
Zion's most popular hiking trail is also its most dangerous due to occasional flash floods.
Reviewed By erinmarina - Sioux Falls, United States
Awesome hike!!! Definitely spend the extra $25 to rent the wooden hiking stick and water shoes/neoprene socks from Zion Outfitters (located right outside the pedestrian entrance to the park). The stick actually provided a lot of stability when hiking through the water and the water shoes were NOT waterproof by any means, but helped support my ankles and give me better grip than my hiking shoes or tennis shoes would have. We went on October 1st, VERY EARLY in the day and we didn't encounter many people until our way back around 11. We hiked through Wall Street and then returned, Definitely recommend this hike!!
2. Delicate Arch
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 1,859 reviews
A world-famous natural sandstone arch.
Reviewed By 355margotm
We hiked to Delicate Arch in November, starting early-ish in the morning of a sunny (but cool) day. The walk has a bit of everything - colonial history (a historic shack), pre-history (petroglyphs), slick-rock, clambering, ledges and - when you get around the final corner, the amazing Delicate Arch! It stands off to the side of a natural amphitheatre, and we couldn't imagine how it came to be formed. Amazing and beautiful.
3. Island in the Sky
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 668 reviews
This area of Canyonlands has a few hiking trails and views of beautiful canyons.
Reviewed By 866TaylorB - Chicago, United States
Island in the Sky, also known as Between the Rivers, is the most visited and easily reached and perhaps the most scenic attraction in Canyonlands National Park. Located close to Moab, Utah and Arches National Park, it is the highest section of Canyonlands, with an average elevation of 6,100 feet, and the access road passes many spectacular and breath-taking viewpoints of the deep twisting canyon on either side. The road runs along a narrowing ravine or Seven-Mile Canyon, climbs the steep cliffs on the south side, then ascends more gently over uneven, partly wooded ground to the flat grasslands in the center of the plateau. The flat land at the top of the Island in the Sky mesa becomes narrower towards the south as the river confluence approaches. After the visitors center, the first viewpoint is Shafer Canyon to the east, then the mining settlement of Potash and a meadow known as Grays Pasture. At a fork in the road, follow the West road past the main campground and an overlook of the Green River at Willow Flat, then descend gradually to the end of the mesa at Upheaval Dome. Near the road junction are two short trails, one to Mesa Arch and one to the White Rim and the Green River. The remaining five miles of the main road cross a rather narrow plateau, past several overlooks, including Buck Canyon, Candlestick Tower, Murray Point, Gooseberry Canyon and the Orange Cliffs. The park road ends at Grand View Point, which offers magnificent vistas across the Colorado canyons and the spires of Monument Basin to the distant La Sal Mountains in the east and the Needles area to the south. A further one-mile, 20-minute walk southwards along the Grand View Trail leads to the very end point of the Island in the Sky plateau, where the cliffs drop away in all directions and the canyons of both rivers can be seen. There are places in Canyonlands where you are alone and can't hear a sound. It is an erie experience, one a native of Chicago isn't used to. At times, in certain spots, Island in the Sky feels that way.
4. Angel's Landing
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 2,899 reviews
Angel's Landing is one of Zion's most spectular scenic outlooks; it can be reached only by a very demanding hike on the West Rim Trail.
Reviewed By 322bobg - North Carolina, United States
The final ascent to Angels Landing is quite the thrill and a little scary - don't attempt if you are afraid of heights. It is also an amazing view of the Zion valley. I am over the hill age wise but I did the hike from start to finish in three hours and fifteen minutes so it is not a large investment of time but it is worth every minute. Walters Wiggle (the series of 20 some steep switchbacks) is a good cardio workout. The best part of the hike is from Scout Lookout to Angels Landing. There are numerous sections where you really need the chains that are installed. When I visited in October there was a waiting line at the base of the West Rim Trail that you need to take to get to Angels Landing and the rangers were handing out passes that you needed to ascend Angels Landing from Scout Lookout. The rangers only allowed about 10 hikers at a time to start the hike in order to control the crowds at Angels Landing.
5. Navajo/Queens Garden Loop
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 1,703 reviews
2.9-mile hiking trail that leads to rock formations shaped like Queen Victoria and her garden.
Reviewed By JayG2720 - Frisco, United States
My wife and I Hike the combined Navajo/Queens Garden loop at Bryce Natl Park and really enjoyed it. Definitely would recommend it for anyone visiting the park as it was an easy to moderate hike that allows you to experience the hoo doo amphitheater up close and provides a great perspective looking up through them up to the ridge. Would agree with the recommendation to start at sunrise point and proceed clockwise as it gives you a much more gradual descent and leaves you a ascent to sunset point that provides great views of Thor’s Hammer and the overall amphitheater. Definitely a highlight of our four park circle tour this fall!
6. Highway 12 Scenic Byway
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 744 reviews
This 122-mile route, located in the southwestern region of the state, passes Bryce Canyon and the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument.
Reviewed By CarElzSEA
Get BBQ in Tropic. Hike to Calf Creek Falls. Eat at Hells Backbone grill. Visit the Anasazi Museum. Allow extra time. Stay at the Prospector Inn, Escalante. Slowly drive the Hogback (and Hells Backbone). Here's the list of highlights along the road: Capitol Reef National Park Boulder Mountain Anasazi State Park Burr Trail Hell's Backbone Backway Hogback Calf Creek Falls Escalante River Trailhead Canyons of the Escalante Upper Valley Granaries Escalante Petrified Forest State Park The Blues Overlook Grand Staircase National Monument Kodachrome Basin State Park Bryce Canyon National Park Red Canyon The problem is having enough time!
7. Little Wild Horse Canyon
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 156 reviews
Sandstone walls rise on either side of this slot canyon.
Reviewed By Brilleto - Annapolis, United States
Goblin Valley is located in a state park and on BLM land. The state park is noted for its hoodoos and weird balanced-rock formations and is extremely popular with the people of Utah who come from far and wide to play amidst the odd assortment of rock formations. Goblin Valley was in the news last year when some yuckapuck decided to push one of the precariously perched rocks off its base. And rather than own it, and just admit that he was an idiot, he claimed that he was performing a public service by knocking over the rock before it fell on some unsuspecting hiker. The authorities didn’t buy his story and he went to jail and was subsequently convicted of being a jerk. Our destination was on BLM land in a place called Little Wildhorse Canyon where we would be hiking through what is arguably the coolest slot canyon in the Southwest that is easily accessible without ropes. We didn’t get on the trail until noon, so it was already cooking. The first half-mile of the hike was along a wide open dry wash with the occasional cottonwood tree providing some much-needed shade. The temperature was already pushing 100 degrees. When the canyon started to tighten up we avoided the first narrow section which I remembered from past hikes was a dead end that turned into a slimy red mud bog ending in a slippery rock wall. I spotted a well worn trail to the left that led up onto a sandstone ledge. We followed the ledge for a few hundred feet until it dropped back down into the narrow canyon beyond the mud trap. We were now at the intersection of Bell Canyon and Little Wild Horse Canyon. There was a very hard-to-see directional sign post on the sand bench in front of us, indicating that we should take the canyon on the right. Bell was the larger canyon to the left. Once we entered Little Wildhorse the narrows began almost immediately and ran pretty much continuously for the next two miles. It was slow going but there was nothing too difficult or challenging. We just took our time and stopped frequently to take in the amazing spectacle of one of the Southwest’s premier slot canyons. The first time I had hiked the isolated canyon, back in the early eighties, I had the place completely to myself. Little Wild Horse had yet to be discovered. But now it’s on everybody’s bucket list, and this was a holiday weekend, so there were lots of hikers – mostly smiling Mormon families with small children. And given how narrow the trail was, we had to stop periodically to let people coming back down the canyon pass by because there wasn’t enough room for more than one person at a time. You are probably wondering: What’s the difference between a slot canyon and a narrows? Well, as we would learn the following evening during the evening ranger talk entitled “Slot Canyons” in the lovely moon-lit Amphitheater at Capitol Reef National Park, the terms are not interchangeable. Ranger Adam explained how he had tried to research the topic and “hit a wall” because there really was no standard definition for the term. So, Adam started asking his canyoneer friends for their definition and they collectively narrowed it down to this: a slot canyon is where you can touch both canyon walls with your arms. Narrows can only be called slot canyons if they are really narrow. Jimmy and I came up with another defining factor for slot canyons: if you are in a slot canyon when a flash flood comes barreling through, you’re toast; whereas in a narrows, you might be able to find some high ground. As an example, the photo above is of Jimmy standing in the Little Wildhorse slot canyon. While the photo below is of me posing casually in Capitol Gorge narrows, where we would hike the next day, and it’s pretty narrow, but it’s still too wide to be called a slot canyon. The Wingate and Navajo Sandstone geologic formations are where you will find a slot canyon. Nobody has any idea how many slot canyons there are in the Colorado Plateau, but there are more than in any place else on earth. Little Wildhorse is so narrow that in some places the walls of the canyon come together and there is no ground to stand on. So, we had to walk sideways on the canyon walls. The smooth rock faces were polished and fluted like magnificent sculptures that would put any man-made piece of art to shame. The scale was immense and the colors psychedelic. It was like hiking on acid. At the two mile mark the canyon opened up for a quarter mile and then came to a large stagnant pool. This was as far as we were going. We could have taken the canyon a few more miles to where it intersected the Bell Canyon, and then hiked back to where we started. But I knew from past experience that once the narrows ended, the rest of the trail was wide open and would be dangerously hot. So, we stopped at the end of the narrow section and drank some water and relaxed in the shade with a happy family from Salt Lake City on vacation. We started back down the canyon at about three and took our time. We were in no hurry. By now, most people had finished their hike, so the canyon was a lot less busy and the silence was refreshing. But the hike back is never as fun as going up because there is no sense of exploration. But novelty is a relative term in a place like Little Wildhorse, and we kept stopping to prolong our visit because we didn’t want to break the spell. (4 miles – 3 hrs) For more travel tips, please check out my popular travel blog.
8. Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 387 reviews
This massive national monument holds endless sights within thousands of acres.
Reviewed By gwenh465
All I can say is WOW. Jaw dropping views. Beautiful sunset views. Watch for road conditions in winter.
9. Observation Point
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 746 reviews
This overlook provides a great view of southern Zion Canyon if you're willing to climb the 2200 feet of elevation to get there.
Reviewed By ankitg445 - Vienna, United States
The main trail was closed when we visited due to landslide/rockfall but we did not want to miss this point, so we visited it though East Messa trail. The drawback of East Mesa trail is that the views are left to the last and the advantage is that the hike is pretty much flat. There is some altitude change towards the end. The canyon was overcrowded when we visited due to Memorial day weekend, however, to our delight, this place was largely empty. You can see Angel's landing down below, along with the road in the canyon. Beautiful views and photo taking opportunities.
10. Canyon Overlook Trail
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 911 reviews
This one-mile hiking trail starts just outside the east entrance to the Zion-Mt Carmel Tunnel, and leads to a dramatic observation point that provides impressive views of Zion's rugged landscape.
Reviewed By W2076UIrhondam - Richmond, United States
This was our first hike of our trip. Definitely a great one. The end view of the canyon will take your breath away. We saw mountain goats and mule deer along the trail as well. Very nice!
